Flo shot Raven a quick glance, saw her eyebrows were drawn close together and gave her knee a pat. ‘You alright, duck? If it’s moving to Sue’s you’re worried about, don’t be. Any experience, good or bad, just adds zest to your experience as a woman of the world.’
Raven’s forehead creased. ‘Yeah, no, I just … I’m sorry about …’ she flicked her hand towards Flo, then hesitated.
‘Oh, love. Don’t feel bad about me. I’m resilient. I’ll get another job. I’m just cross because the call they cited as “strike three” wasn’t exactly a matter of life and death. It were more a case of a pants boyfriend needing the axe, but …’ She exhaled heavily. ‘I guess it wasn’t my business.’
Raven stared at her hands, then out into the traffic.
Flo slammed her hand on the steering wheel. ‘Of course it’s my business!’
Raven jumped.
‘Sorry, duck. I’m a bit more worked up than I thought.’
‘Well,’ Raven drew the word out as she stroked a streak of blue-black hair as one might a teddy bear when they were nervous. ‘It’s not like we’re robots, right?’
Flo slapped the steering wheel again. ‘Exactly, right. We’re not robots and the people who ring in aren’t either. We’re flesh and blood and need to be able to respond to the odd curveball life throws our way. Even if it does make us feel uncomfortable. That’s what life is. A big, jumbly, uncomfortable mess that we have to treat like it’s a big, gorgeous, trifle. We should all want to dive right into the centre of that gooey, fruity, fluffy mess. Not cling to the hundreds and thousands as if they’re life rafts. Isn’t that right, duck?’ She caught Raven considering the question even though it was obviously rhetorical. Poor girl. She looked a bit lost. Not too unlike Sue, who had been ever so flustered when they’d all climbed into their cars and had set off from the call centre. Flo quickly pulled the car into a little shopping centre. She’d pick up a couple of housewarming style items to give Sue a slightly longer window to regroup before they arrived. Bless. Raven and Sue. Her two new unexpected friends. Little ducklings, more like. The pair of them needed a mother hen to tuck them under her wing and … an idea struck.
‘Raven, love. How do you feel about cycling?’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘You think you might like that? Raising some money for charity?’
Flo looked so hopeful as she pulled up to the curb on Harworth Lane it would have actually been painful to say no. Raven shrugged and made what she hoped was a noncommittal mmm that went up and down an octave before fading away.
‘Luhhhvely!’ Flo clapped her hands, clearly taking the shrug as a yes, then pitty-patted the steering wheel as she sing-songed, ‘Get on yer bike, Rachel Woolly! We’ve got something better in mind!’
Raven winced. Flo did know Raven wasn’t going to quit her job to go bike riding with Flo, right? It was, like, winter out. That. And she didn’t have a bike. Even so, this was the happiest Flo had been on their entire journey which had compromised of not one, but three stops at the shops to ‘pick up party supplies.’
Kicking herself out of her family home and moving into the house of a woman who needed a flatmate because her husband had just killed himself in it didn’t seem much cause for celebration to Raven. Maybe Flo had been buying ‘Just got fired’ party poppers. Who knew? Flo was a trip. Not like any seventy-year-old she knew anyway. If she was vaguely interested in riding her bike across the country, which she wasn’t, she would want to do it with Flo.
In fact, riding a bicycle at all fell pretty firmly in the ‘not gonna happen’ category, but so did moving out of her parents to avoid working for Uncle Ravi during a gap year that was rapidly drawing to an end. Perhaps there was room for a bit of elasticity in what she did and didn’t go for now that she was, in Flo’s words, a ‘woman of the world.’ Flo, who’d given her a lightning-speed autobiography in between running in and out of the shops, hadn’t had parents who felt morally obliged to micromanage their daughter’s entire future. In fact, they’d celebrated when she’d got a job and moved out. In my day, university was one of those things for posh folk and nerdy types. They were right chuffed when I cleared off and started fending for myself. Best day of my life, come to think of it. The freedom!
Flo, still lost in her daydreams about the cycle ride, laughed and gave a happy sigh. ‘I can guarantee you it’ll be an adventure. I can’t say I’ll be very speedy. I’ve not ridden a bike in … oh … when was it?? Rio? Maybe Santa Monica. Adelaide? Somewhere on the beach and quite a while back. Years, must be.’
‘You’ve been to all of those places?’
‘And more, duck. Courtesy of a spiffy uniform and British Airways. All over the globe.’ The happy sigh turned wistful. ‘I was a trolley dolly for almost forty years. Started well before you were born. Back when we were allowed to be trolley dollies anyway.’ She flashed Raven a wicked grin that gave Raven a glimpse of what Flo must’ve looked like back then: glamorous, fun-loving, the life of any party.
Raven had no idea what it was like to be any of those things, let alone feel a splash of the glee Flo glowed with. She’d had hits of enthusiasm when she thought of being at Newcastle, and once when she’d got her eye make-up just right she’d felt the
